Two of the world’s largest technology services and consulting firms Accenture and Capgemini registered healthy top-line growth in India in the year ended March 2015.Anirban Sen | ET Bureau | January 28, 2016, 07:48 IST

BENGALURU: Two of the world’s largest technology services and consulting firms Accenture and Capgemini registered healthy top-line growth in India in the year ended March 2015, but struggled with margins due to higher taxes and finance costs. Over the past decade, both have expanded their workforces substantially in India to rival homegrown outsourcing giants such as Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services.

Accenture Services Pvt. posted revenue of Rs 17,150.9 crore (about $2.5 billion) for the year, up about 16% from the year ago, helped mainly by new clients and healthy growth from global accounts managed by teams in India. Profit after tax was nearly flat at Rs 1,963.5 crore, according to documents posted on the corporate affairs ministry’s website.

In the same period, French rival Capgemini’s India business recorded a growth of about 16%. According to a filing with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) earlier in January, Capgemini India Pvt. reported revenue of Rs 5,992.4 crore, compared with Rs 5,184.77 crore in the year-ago period.

Accenture and Capgemini declined to comment on their India numbers and current headcount.

According to headhunters and industry estimates, Accenture currently has more than 130,000 employees in India. It does not provide a region-wise breakup.

Multinational technology services giants such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Accenture have over the past decade replicated the global delivery model that has become the trademark of Indian software exporters and built up workforces of hundreds of thousands of employees in India who maintain and develop back-office software applications, among other things.

Experts tracking the companies said while Accenture and Capgemini have made significant headway in India over the past few years, they still trail IBM, which dominates the local outsourcing market, especially in the telecom sector, with large contracts from Bharti, Vodafone and Idea.

Despite its India growth, Accenture has widely been seen as a late entrant to India’s outsourcing market compared with IBM.

In 2011, the company hired outsourcing industry veteran Avinash Vashistha as part of an effort to shore up its India business. Vashistha served as Accenture’s India chairman till 2015, before stepping down. He was succeeded by Rekha Menon.

“Accenture has been traditionally focused on India from a consulting perspective but over the last few years, they have upped the ante on winning outsourcing deals here,” said Dinesh Goel, India head at ISG. “Capgemini’s business from India remains relatively small though they’ve scaled up quickly.”

Over the past 10 years, since IBM first got a $750-million landmark outsourcing contract in 2004 from Bharti Airtel amid much fanfare, it has outgrown all domestic and global competitors on the back of large contracts from customers such as Indian Railways.

Several people ET spoke with about Ericsson’s India operations, including its current and former employees, said the Stockholm-based firm has reduced headcount in the last one year or so across functions, in line with its global restructuring.